In the Light
by ValidDreams
Summary: Solaufein escapes a Handmaiden and her hunting party by opening a dimensional door with no destination. He could end up anywhere on Toril on under it. Instead, he ends up in the hands of a practical moon elf and in the middle of the adventure that is life in the Hordelands.
1. Awake

He felt heavy and each breath was a labor to draw.

What had happened?

Phaere and the Silver Dragon and Veldrin with the eyes too sad for a drow…

 _The hunting party_.

They claimed they came in the name of Lloth and whether she had any power beyond the Houses and the Middledark's great cities or not was of little consequence. They came in the name of defending the drow's oppressive ways and slaughtering those that escaped alive. They came for him, to avenge Ust Natha that fell in the wake of his disappearance, and at that moment there were probably others scouring the world for a Veldrin of distant Ched Nasad.

He hoped she fared well on her journey and that somewhere there was a human who walked the surface that had conquered Ust Natha.

The thought made him smile.

And maybe with Veldrin, he would have stood a chance against the hunting party's numbers. He had watched her fell Umber Hulks and Illithids without flinching and he was no fledging apprentice wielding his first dagger. But the priestess had thralls and assassins to spare and even as he cut them down more seemed to come.

So, he had reached recklessly into the Weave and, with a prayer upon his lips, called up a dimensional door to take him away—somewhere, anywhere _away_.

It had been reckless and his aim had been a great distance, which could have landed him anywhere on Toril or under it. But what choice did he have? Death? Not at the hands of Lloth's Chosen. Not if he had a choice. There were many beasts he would have gladly fed first before that.

But now… now what? Where was he? He felt warm. And comfortable. And there was singing?

He listened closer.

Humming and breathy whispers of words he couldn't make out, but he recognized the Elven tongue easily enough.

Gods, was he a prisoner?

No, he certainly wouldn't be comfortable as a prisoner. Or even _alive_.

The thought was enough to trigger long-set alarms within him and a primordial beast within panicked. Unable to even open his eyes or feel anything past his wrists, Solaufein still shifted and tried to force himself upright and into some state of wakefulness.

Forcing his eyes to open and focus, his vision spun and everything was a swirl of darkness and flickering shadows. Pain rushed to the fore of his consciousness, but it was _something_ at least to know that he could feel—that he breathed and he _lived_.

Then, hands, small but strong and firm, steadied him and he was on his back again in an instant.

Was he upright to start?

"None of that," a voice chided and it was the same one that had been singing earlier, though this time it spoke the harsher, throatier words of the drow. Even so, the tone was gentle and the voice kind. "Rest now. There is no danger here."

Solaufein's vision still swam, but among the collage of shadows and half-color he picked out a pair of piercing, silver eyes.

And with that he fell unconscious.

* * *

Solaufein came to again an indeterminable amount of time later to the sensation of hands and fingertips moving across his skin in whisper-light movements like flames tickling tinder.

This time, he quelled his panic and waited, mustering the strength to open his eyes.

When he did, the hands were gone.

He was in a room of sturdy stone walls and dim, gray light seeping through the seams of a dirty and patched curtain pulled over the window.

He turned his head, in as much as his stiff neck would let him, and saw a figure standing at a table against the far wall under a magical light that hovered overhead. A woman, he thought, by the cut of her figure and the long skirt that pooled at her feet.

She was preparing something, given the motions of her hands and the sounds he picked up of grinding and stirring, and when she turned her head and reached for another vial of something in a dusky bottle, he could make out the delicate, upward sweep of her ear amid the nest of her short, dark hair.

A surface elf—a moon elf if he remembered his lore right and he placed the pale, almost luminescent glow of her skin correctly.

When she turned toward him, her hands were still occupied with the motions of mixing something in a stone mortar with a round, marble stone and the magical orb of light that had been illuminating her work followed just over her shoulder. It lit the delicate features of her face with a cool light and defined it with sharp shadows.

Elves were known to be beautiful creatures—even the drow. So it was no surprise that this female was just that. But there was a mulish set to the fine line of her jaw and a hardness in her eyes—silver, the ones he had seen before—that spoke of experience and years. Eternally youthful she certainly appeared, but he wondered how many centuries old she truly was.

Eventually, those eyes alighted upon him just as she reached his side and she seemed momentarily surprised to find him watching her. Then her lips curved slightly and she set herself beside him on the very edge of the thin mattress he rested upon. Casually, she reached up to the mage-light over her shoulder and grasped it with her hand, dimming it and turning its color to a smoldering blue.

Solaufein blinked and realized that he had been cringing against it before. But this, this was tolerable, much more akin to the bioluminescent fungi of the tunnels and caverns below.

"You wake," she said withdrawing her hand. She spoke in Drowic, as fluent as before. "I wondered when you might. My name is Ara."

He frowned. That didn't sound right. Darthiir names were usually longer, no? Not that he knew much about the surface, but that seemed fairly consistent…

"Arathyralei Eleralith," she supplied off-handedly as she set the mortar aside and began to wipe the pestle clean with her fingers, of what he could see was a thick paste. She gave him a knowing look. "Just call me Ara. Do you have a name?"

It was so strange, to be in this position, speaking to a darthiir, who spoke the words of the drow so fluently and casually, and gave his heritage no more acknowledgment than that. What did it mean? Was this a trick? A trap? Was she mixing a poison? No, she was handling it with her bare skin. It couldn't be a poison—not of any real potency.

The darthiir—Ara—seemed to sense or _see_ his panic setting in. She reached for him, the long sleeve of her dress slithering across the bare flesh of his chest, and he caught her wrist quickly in his hand. The motion made his entire body ache but he was relieved that his reflexes were with him. Was she armed? He cursed himself for not looking.

Her eyes met his and betrayed no fear. Carefully, she laid her other hand over his and began to rub his knuckles, kneading them with firm, gentle circles. "Your hands are callused and scarred—you are covered in scars," she whispered. "You were a warrior, wherever you came from, weren't you?" Her eyes softened. "To have survived so long in the Underdark, you must be very strong. No wonder you are so afraid. The strongest always are when they are helpless like this. It is not your way."

Solaufein swallowed hard, his eyes darted from their hands to her eyes and back. The last gentle touch he had known was Veldrin's hand upon his arm, consoling him and urging him to follow at the same time. Before that? Phaere and the moments they stole away from the world outside and that memory was so old as to be a skeleton—dust and bone and naught else. After her turning, he had never trusted anyone enough to let his guard down. Not in the city; not among the blood thirsty cutthroats seeking scraps of glory in the name of their houses.

"Relax, warrior," Ara said at length, laying his hand—his grip long gentled and broken—upon his chest, and pressing it there with hers. "I have not healed you to see you hurt again. I swear it."

He took a breath and then another, trying to slow the gallop of his heart, and soothe the gnashing teeth of the primordial creature in him. But he flinched and reached for her hands when he felt her touch again, her fingertips ghosting over his ribs and the tender flesh of his abdomen.

She smiled. "Would you like to sit up and watch me work?"

Solaufein nodded, although he didn't think he'd have the strength to stay upright for long, and let her guide his arm around her shoulders. She felt frail and far too slender beneath his touch, but she had no trouble lifting him and propping him against the stone wall that the cot was pressed to. The chill of it pierced him and he realized for the first time that he had been stripped of more than just his shirt.

Modesty was not a trait of the drow, but he gripped the blanket nonetheless. "My things…"

Something in her eyes told him that she wanted to laugh, but knew better. "Your clothing was stained beyond saving and your leathers tattered beyond use. There are some shirts and trousers in the footlocker there that you can use, though, when you are up." She gestured to the corner and a sturdy, lockbox against the wall. "Your weapons were taken by the Marshal. I will get them for you if you feel safer with them."

"Marshal?"

She shook her head. "Marshal Bren. He organizes our militia and he means well. I am afraid he does not trust you."

"I cannot blame him."

"You are one man."

"I am drow."

Ara raised her eyes to his. "One drow, who I found dying three days ago," she answered. "I like our chances."

She blinked one eye at him, friendly and familiar, though she was neither.

Solaufein watched her as she pulled old bandages away from his wounds and cleansed them with warm water and a soft rag, kept at his bedside. That done, she began to rub the paste she had created into the gashes.

"You are not a cleric," he observed.

She glanced at him. "Drow poisons are voracious," she said. "It took everything out of me to take their taint from you. It will be a day at least before I can work my spells again. Tomorrow, we will do away with this primitive nonsense and go about this properly."

"Ah, then I apologize. I have never known anyone capable of undoing a Handmaiden's work. I am… very grateful."

Ara smiled. "I had help."

With that she stood and turned away and he said nothing.

Then, with no warning whatsoever, a beast appeared at the foot of his bed.

Solaufein, on reflex, tried to scramble away from the animal—toward the wall as if he could climb it—but his progress was hindered by his wounds and by the fact that the animal had seen fit to join him on the bed and pin his legs with its weight.

A dog. Just a dog, he told himself. Drow sometimes kept dogs—however rarely. Or rather, they kept _canines_. Dogs of the sort bred to hunt in the low light of the Underdark's caverns, beasts that were ferocious by nature, and ones that could not in any way be considered pets. Hellhounds were not unheard of and even preferred. But once, just once, he had seen a blink dog.

Given the way this animal had just appeared, that was his best guess.

It did little to calm Solaufein as the animal stared at him with large, unreasonably intelligent eyes. It was a slim, long-legged canine with large, upright ears, a long snout, and a dense coat of reddish fur.

"Ambrus!" Ara scolded the beast, shooing it off the bed with a flap of her hands and long sleeves. The dog obeyed, springing away from Solaufein and dancing out of the elf woman's reach, prancing on its toes and swinging its tail around in a playful show. "Leave him be! I told you not to come in here, you mongrel!"

The dog leapt over the bed and then back again, clearing it and Solaufein by a good foot, bowed low with its rump high in the air, and then blinked in and out of sight one and then twice.

On its third attempt, Ara spanked the animal with the flat of her hand.

It howled as if it had been grievously wounded, staggered away, and then blinked again out of sight.

Solaufein had no idea what to make of this display.

Ara shook her head and pushed some stray hair from her eyes. "It must be dinner time," she explained. "Now that you are with us, I will bring you something. You must be starved."

Well, now that she mentioned it…

"Ambrus will be back, no doubt. Go ahead and give him a swat if you want. It will not deter him long, but you can always try. But do _not_ feed him or you will not ever be rid of the nuisance—that was my mistake." Shaking her head, she went to her worktable in the corner. A moment later, she returned. With a knife. "Here."

Solaufein frowned when she offered the blade to him handle first. "What is this?"

"I cannot get your things before dinner and I know you will feel safer if you are armed," she said. "So take it."

It was a simple knife with a wooden handle and a wide blade with a single, razor-like edge—one meant for utility rather than defense. Once upon a time, it might have been a hunting knife.

Solaufein accepted it, gingerly. He ran his thumb over the blade and turned it in his hand.

It was trust he did not deserve, really—that no drow deserved. But would treasure this kindness.

"I…" He considered the blade for a long moment and then nodded. "Thank you, Ara."

His grasp, or maybe his _use_ of Common, must have surprised her, because she didn't answer at first. Then she nodded. "Of course. I will be back as soon as I am able."

He watched her as she turned away and reached for the door.

Here he was on the Surface and he lived. It was more than he could have dreamed not more than a week before. And the only reason he was alive was this woman he barely knew.

"Solaufein."

She turned toward him, her brow knitted in confusion. "I'm sorry?"

He rubbed the blankets gathered in his lap between his forefinger and thumb, testing the feel of rough-spun wool and marveling at just how little it differed from the blankets of his bunk in Ust Natha. It was one of the few similarities he'd find on the Surface, he imagined. "My name is Solaufein," he said at length.

Her expression softened and then she began to smile. "Well then, welcome to the Hordelands."

* * *

 _No_ , I don't know why I'm starting another story. Fanfiction is a curse designed to eat your brain.


	2. Visions

Ambrus returned after Ara came with soup. After some clowning and capering, it came close enough to let Solaufein rub its long ears and stroke its thick coat.

The drow marveled at the animal's strong, dense musculature and large, powerful feet and wondered at the cleric's use for such a beast. It seemed like a jester by nature, but it had good, well-honed instincts. It had smelled him all over, sniffed his wounds, and kept out of his reach before ascertaining his friendliness. Maybe it was a companion or for protection? Did she travel?

His lower body on the floor and forelegs propped on the edge of the bed, Ambrus laid his head across Solaufein's thighs with a gentleness not to be expected of a beast so large. Then he glanced at the soup bowl and discarded bread and back meaningfully a dozen times.

Solaufein grinned. "Scavenger. I was told not to feed you," he said.

The dog let out a soft, wounded whine and shifted its whole body to push its head further in the direction of the bowl.

The drow laughed and combed his fingers through the dense, red fur at the beast's broad throat. "Maybe if you can show me what you can do."

Ambrus sat up attentively and then sprang away and turned a wild circle, his tail flailing like a banner lost in the wind.

Solaufein reached for the bread. "Then sit for me."

Ambrus did so, almost with the attitude of one who seemed bored with his task.

"Down."

The dog slid forward, his belly meeting the floor, his haunches gathered close and ready to spring back up.

"Speak."

Ambrus answered with a bark that Solaufein felt echo in his chest and then the dog followed with a series of guttural whines and pitchy yipping that bordered on singing.

He couldn't help but laugh and he threw the dog a corner of the bread roll.

Ambrus got back to his feet and then blinked away. He reappeared again just as quickly and Solaufein frowned at him.

Then the dog blinked away again. And reappeared. And then he blinked again.

"What are you doing?" Solaufein asked.

The dog paused a moment and then blinked three more times in rapid succession.

It was in the middle of another round of this nonsense—four rapid blinks—that the drow began to laugh. "I see!" he said and he tore off a larger piece of bread. "You can count!"

The dog caught the bread and gnashed it between its teeth greedily.

Voices in the hall, alerted Solaufein and he turned his head.

He hadn't heard anything beyond the door at all except footsteps, which always seemed to speed up when they passed his door. This change was distinct.

Ambrus had finished his bread and was listening as well, his head tipped and his ears turning incrementally in an attempt to pick up the sounds at the best angle.

"The Council will want to see him."

"They will. When he is hale."

Ara's cutting calm was unmistakable even through the mortar and brick of the walls that separated them.

"It would have been better if you had just left him to bleed. No one wants him here."

"You do not speak for everyone, Bren."

"Now, listen here, _wisewoman_ —"

"Yes, mock my title all you want—I am not as old as Obedai. Nevertheless, I was serving the Hordes of Krisk Tarog when you were just the drunken glimmer in your grandfather's eye. I will take you over my knee if I must, Marshal."

Solaufein wondered if Ara spoke to this Krisk Tarog with the same flippant boredom. Or if this _Bren_ spoke to everyone with such snide derision.

"He's obviously eating," the voice of the other, the Marshal, growled back. "Get him up and present him to the Council in two days or you'll answer for it."

"Was that a threat?—" It was and Solaufein pushed the blankets away from his lap and reached for Ambrus for support as he began the shaky process of getting out of bed. "Do not play that game with me, Marshal. So, when I hear the same from one of the Councilors, I will see to just that. Now, I bid you good night."

"Just wait a minute! _I_ will speak to this drow tonight."

"You will not."

"Look, you glassy-eyed, knife-eared know-it-all, it is my job to protect this bunged hole and see to it that I know everything about everyone that comes and goes. I know he's _pretty_ , but there's more than one cure for a wet cunt if that's your problem."

" _Enough_."

It had taken more of Solaufein than he thought it would to stand and open the door, but listening to the man was akin to having ones ears throttled by the shrieks of umber hulks mid-orgy in the breeding season—which was to say, more unpleasant than even the mental image that sentence conjured. And no, this wasn't how he preferred to go to his first battle on the surface—barely able to stand, holding a bed sheet around his hips with one hand, and an old hunting knife turned herb-menace in the other—but he could not let this just go on.

He supposed it didn't say very many good things about him and his preconceived notions and prejudices that it just _figured_ Bren was a human. On a similarly unflattering note, it also meant something to him that while Bren was taller than him, it was by mere inches. He had always had the advantage of being one of the tallest among his peers in Ust Natha, which gave him more heft and muscle and that meant a lot as a warrior.

And, given his evident surprise, Bren also took note. Clearly, there was an image he had in his head of what a drow was meant to look like and it was not being met. Either he had it engrained that all elves were willowy and frail or drow were meant to be something else entirely more absurd all together, in which case he would be disappointed no matter what drow had come.

Bren himself was little more than a bearded, but otherwise bald wall of meat and muscle, probably born of stock meant to take orders and maybe the first arrow on the front line. That he had any sort of authority had to be an accident or oversight.

"Where I come from, you would have your tongue cut out for speaking to a female like that," Solaufein said, nodding to Ara though his eyes were on Bren. "And that would just be the beginning."

"I did not think your kind were so chivalrous," Bren sneered back.

The drow tipped his head. "What is chivalrous? This is not a word among the drow." He shook his head. "In the Underdark you would be punished for not knowing your place—somewhere above the kobolds kept to amuse the spiders but lower than the body servants the mistresses leave chained to the bedposts."

The human looked to Ara. " _This_ is the filth you saved!"

Solaufein snorted. "Surrounded by such paragons as yourself she will no doubt come to see her error."

Bren looked like he wanted to answer or even step forward and act, but Ambrus appeared then in the hall and insinuated himself between everyone present to lean his heavy weight against Ara's legs, effectively barricading her from both men. His attention was pointedly fixed on Bren.

The presence of such a large and intimidating figure as the dog put a stop to whatever physical confrontation the human had in mind.

Ara patted the dog affectionately and rubbed his ears. Then she looked up and her demeanor grew cold again as she gave the men each a flat stare. "If you two are quite done, I am tired. Bren, if I see you again before the Council calls for me I will personally feed you to a Marilith. Solaufein—room."

Bren turned a few shades of red and drew in a sharp breath, winding up to retort, but then reconsidered and stormed off without a word. This indicated to Solaufein that Ara was perfectly capable of summoning such a demon or that Bren at least believed she was and he was not sure if this was a comforting notion or not.

When he was certain Bren was gone, he turned away as well.

Inside the room, he all but collapsed back into bed, the effort of standing upright for so long after so many days in bed and without food or water having exhausted what little energy he had. He needed to get up and start training and working his muscles again immediately as this was completely unacceptable for a warrior of his caliber.

Ara helped him untangle himself from the sheet while maintaining some modicum of modesty and then situated the blankets for him again, though it was unnecessary.

A muscle was pulled taut in her jaw and he could tell there was something on her mind just by the tension that brewed between them.

"Out with it," he said.

She glanced at him. "You baited him," she said, scolding. "I was hoping that, given how civilized you were behaving before, you were above that kind of behavior."

Solaufein scoffed. "You should have crushed his skull for what he said to you."

"You are on the surface now, Solaufein," she pressed. "We do not solve our conflicts here by killing each other—as expedient as that would be. This is true even in the Hordelands."

He huffed. "What are the Hordelands? And what is this place?"

She sighed and took a seat on a wooden stool, folding her skirts around herself and wrapping her hands in her sleeves. "Without maps to look at it will all make little sense to someone of the Underdark if you did not know your relation to the surface."

Solaufein frowned and considered this. Suldanessellar had been very close to Ust Natha and it had been where on the surface? He had heard the name before a dozen times when spying on Phaere and Mother Ardulace. Tenthar? No, that wasn't right. Tentyr? Tentry? _Tethyr._ He glanced at her and then looked away. "Where I come from does not matter."

"I suppose it doesn't," she agreed. Was she disappointed he had not told her? Did she care? It was impossible to say. "The Hordelands are a vast territory, also known as the Endless Wastes, but that makes them sound uninhabitable, when you will find that the tribes and the travelers here do just fine." She gestured to the space around them. "Where we are is known as the Copper Hold, a fortified sanctuary of sorts and a trading post. We number a little more than five hundred together, not counting the travelers within our walls at any given time."

"A sanctuary?"

She shrugged. "Monks of some order or another came down from one of their mountains and built this place centuries ago. They meant it as a place to honor their god by offering aid to everyone who came to them. Back then, it was just the sanctuary, what the Keep is now, and the walls. But the last of the monks died ages ago. Now, there is the library, what we are above, and the market and the smiths and the homes both in and outside the walls."

"It sounds idyllic," Solaufein murmured. "Why do you have a militia?"

"We have some petty crime and we try to maintain the same spirit of opened arms that the monks founded this place with so as not to offend the god it was originally dedicated to, but there are always people that _do_ mean harm." Ara shrugged again. "However, Bren's job is less important than he would like, which annoys him. It is one of his objections to me. I hold more power with the Council, though I am an outsider."

"Because you are an elf?" the drow asked. "I cannot help but get the impression that he was bothered by little more than my otherness than anything to do with what a drow _is_."

She shrugged. "Bren's little-mindedness is nothing new to me and it should not trouble you. There are dwarves that trade here regularly from the mountains, human tribes that are all unique in their ways, and elves of this region that make our differences pale by comparison and I do not think that any of them will take exception to you. Those that think like him are uncommon here. This land is not kind and allies, no matter how grudging, are necessary to survive. When people decide to hate one another in the Hordelands, their troubles are typically rooted in much deeper troubles than how their ears or flesh differ in shape and color."

Solaufein hummed a bit. "That is reassuring I suppose."

Ara nodded and considered him for a moment. "You did not need to defend me," she said at length.

He shrugged.

"Why?"

Solaufein shrugged again. "A reflex, maybe. It is nothing less than what I would be expected to do for a female of my house," he said.

"I would not think a drow female would require defending."

He smirked wryly. "No, a drow female would not and she would punish a male for defending her. But it would be less harsh than the punishment for _not_ speaking up in such a circumstance."

She sighed. "I forget sometimes how complicated drow society can be," she murmured.

Ara stood and Solaufein watched her as she set about cleaning up her worktable and putting things away.

It was just when he began to drift off, little by little, that he heard her humming again and it roused him back to consciousness.

" _I never meant to fall by you unseen and far off I can hear you singing_ ," she whispered, her voice lilting gently. " _It comes swiftly now, sweeping me away, and it's been too long since I have seen your smile. Then everything fades and I am gone, but far off I can hear you sing_."

"A singing priestess," he murmured. "You are just full of surprising talents."

She glanced back at him. "A critical drow—in many ways you are not all that surprising. Predictability can be a comfort."

He laughed at that.

Ara reached overhead and retrieved a candleholder set with a single candle burned down nearly to its base, which she brought to his bedside and set atop the low table at his right. "You look exhausted," she said. "I will leave you now so you can get your rest. Ambrus?"

The dog had settled down beside the bed, facing the doorway, and lifted his head to regard the woman.

She smiled. "It looks like you have made a friend. If you mind him terribly, I can take him with me."

Solaufein shook his head. "He can stay."

Ara nodded and gestured to the candle. "If you need something in the night, you can blow on the wick to light it," she said. "I will be back in the morning. If you need something before then, send Ambrus for me. Ambrus?"

The dog gave what appeared to be a sharp nod of understanding and she rubbed his ears affectionately before turning away to the door.

"Good night, Solaufein."

" _Aluve_."

* * *

Ara did not come in the morning. Or, at least Solaufein did not see her. A fidgety boy with knobby knees and ears too big for his head—barely more than a child even by human standards, Solaufein imagined—came instead.

It was the sound of him clumsily tripping over Ambrus and the dog's offended yelp that woke the drow.

The boy wrung his hands as he stumbled to attention. "Ah, the Lady is busy this morning—Razari's baby came early. She told me to have a bath drawn for you. It's, um, down the hall."

Solaufein gestured to the footlocker. "Pants."

The boy blinked uncomprehendingly.

The drow huffed. "Unless I am to parade down the hall naked, get me some clothes, _dalhar_."

The boy scrambled to answer and Solaufein took the offered clothing without a word.

"She is a midwife then?" he asked.

The boy was nosing around some of the components on Ara's worktable and turned sharply back around to look at Solaufein. "Ah, uh, yes. The Lady helps with all the births here. She, uh, does the blessin's and namin's too. And marriages. Well, basically any time you need a hand waved and the gods called up, that's what the Lady does."

The boy led him down the hallway—more stone walls with little to make them distinct—and to another door.

Inside was also a bedroom but this more comfortably situated and furnished for a guest or a resident with a wardrobe and two windows rather than the meager slot he had been allotted before. Clearly, the other room was meant for patients in a critical state, which justified the nearness of Ara's tools. She might have had a dozen such workplaces for all he knew.

But the only thing that really interested him was in the far corner of the room. There was a metal tub behind a screen with steam still rising from the surface of the water and beside it a stool piled with towels and fresh soaps.

Drow were decadent, ruthless, corrupted people, but they were also people who valued personal hygiene. Lavish soaps, perfumes distilled from exotic surface flowers, bath salts mixed with herbs to pamper their flesh and soften scars, and oils for their hair to make braiding and beading it easier were all common enough. And while warriors, for the most part, might have forewent some of the scented treatments for the sake of avoiding detection on missions, neither gender was excluded from these rituals. For the males it was a matter of pleasing any female that might call on them and females simply sought to please themselves.

At that moment, however, Solaufein was just glad to see soap and hot water.

He dismissed the boy and wasted no time stripping and settling into the tub. Goddess, it was bliss to his abused muscles and to his surprised, it didn't hurt what was left of the wounds…

Solaufein ran a hand over his abdomen as he thought of the marks and then huffed in amusement when nothing but skin met his touch. It said something of the woman, either of her abilities or something else, that she could work without disturbing his rest.

Reminding himself to thank her for it, he dropped back to soak his hair with water and then reached for what appeared to be the shampoo.

Though he certainly did not feel clean, he found that there was no dried blood to clear away. He imagined Ara must have tried to bathe him in bed when he was unconscious. It was an interesting thought—a priestess powerful enough to counteract the effects of a poison concocted by one of Lloth's Handmaidens all by herself bathing her own patients.

It was either ferocious meticulousness or humility unimaginable to a drow.

He stood to wash his body, lathering the soap and then bending to rinse when he was finished.

When he was done, he wrung out his hair and stepped from the tub, dripping on the floor until he procured a towel from the stack on the stool.

He was in the middle of toweling his hair when he heard a scuffle in the hallway laid over by Ara's voice, though it was difficult to tell since she was _shouting_.

" _Kela! Kela!_ "

He understood when the door suddenly bumped open—he hadn't really thought to lock it—and a young girl fell backward into the room and landed on her rump. She looked back at Solaufein and, though she turned an unflattering shade of red, she couldn't entirely stop herself from giggling. Then she was hauled upright by Ara and shoved outside to join a gaggle of other tittering, notably less shameful girls the same age and the whole lot was shoveled down the hallway.

Ara returned a minute later and kicked the door shut behind her with a huff. She looked tired, though she moved with no lack of energy in a colorless, unadorned dress of plain cloth cut wide at the shoulders with sleeves pinned at the elbow and a skirt split on each side to the hip, revealing the slip beneath—work clothes meant to allow movement and plain to make washing them easy.

To Solaufein, she looked more like a slave in rags than a servant of any god. But now that she finally stood in the light, he could not help but note that her hair was not black but a fairly striking dark blue. He wondered if other moon elves shared such coloring.

He had arranged himself on the stool with a towel in his lap, still combing out his hair. "So…?" he began. "How did the birth go?"

"Too soon," she said, still scowling at the door. "The week will tell."

He nodded and glanced at the door. "So, will I have an audience every time I bathe?" he wondered.

She rolled her eyes. "Those were Obedai's apprentices—like herding distracted kittens," she snorted. "I said that you would not face much overt scrutiny here, but that does not mean you are not a thing of curiosity and the apprentices read too many badly written novels."

Solaufein snorted in amusement and watched her as she crossed the room to check the bed and the wardrobe, as if going over the boy's work of that morning. "And you? What is your excuse for wandering freely in and out during my ablutions?"

"You are my patient," she answered dismissively. "And you have nothing I have not already seen hanging twixt the legs of every man-thing that can swing it around and boast about it length, girth, or otherwise."

For Solaufein, it felt good to laugh at something genuinely funny after so long pretending to find humor in anything others in Ust Natha found it in.

"Here."

He looked up and saw that Ara was offering a file and a small knife to tend his nails. He accepted them with a nod. "Have you a tie for my hair?"

"Mm, I keep mine trimmed, as you see," she noted, combing her short locks with her fingers. "But I have some twine somewhere.

Solaufein nodded and considered the length for a moment. It was not really practical any more, was it? He had never spent as much time on his appearance as some of his brothers had and he had no status here to maintain that his _hair_ could speak toward. In the Underdark every little detail was needed to make the correct impression, but the surface seemed much more about words than the subtle cues and body language of down below.

He fingered the ends as Ara returned from some drawer or cabinet with a bit of twine for him.

"What is it?"

He hated to ask, but he knew he might just as soon end up scalping himself if he made the attempt on his own. "If you would, I think it might be practical to cut some of this."

The woman considered him a moment and then circled around behind him. He straightened when she swept his hair back over his shoulders and ran her fingers through its length, measuring out how it fell down his back, nearly to his tailbone. "There certainly is a lot of it," she agreed. She hummed and her fingers curled around and fooled a bit unnecessarily with the varying lengths of his hair as she fanned the white locks out over his back. Then she pressed two fingertips into a spot just between his shoulders. "How about there?"

It would be strange, certainly. But not so short that he could not at least tie it back. "Do it."

Ara turned away, presumably to retrieve shears from somewhere within the room. She was back a moment later and began to tie off sections of his hair to make less of a mess when she cut it.

"You never told me how you found me," Solaufein said after a while, occupied with trimming and cleaning his nails.

The question had been circling his mind. Surely his portal had not landed him inside the keep, which was presumably protected by some kind of magic. Had she just stumbled on him? It was almost too great a stroke of chance to believe.

"Does it matter?"

He shrugged. "I suppose not."

She worked for a bit, cutting sections of hair and then combing the length out to make sure she did not miss any stray pieces. She was nearly finished before she spoke again. "It was night and I was in the middle of my reverie," she began. "I had a vision."

Solaufein frowned. "A dream?"

Ara appeared at his side, four cut tails of his hair gathered in her hands, which she set aside with the towel he had used before to dry it. "I do not dream when I reverie."

He raked his fingers through his hair. It seemed to end too soon and his head felt too light and foreign on his shoulders. "What did you see?"

"I was outside, in the moonlight, out on one of the plains not far from here. Then a star landed at my feet. When I knelt to touch it, I realized it was bleeding." She paused a moment, as if remembering. Then she looked at him. "When I woke, my heart was racing and I knew it was not a dream. So I dressed and I took a horse and Ambrus and I went. Ambrus indicated that he smelled something nearly a mile before we reached you and led me the rest of the way." She shook her head. "You were in a horrible state."

She walked around him again and gently began to smooth his hair back into a low club and tie it.

He frowned, still picking at his nails. "Do you often have visions?"

"Never." She shrugged. "I am thankful to whoever sent it, though. It seems to have worked."

Solaufein looked at her, surprised. "So… you do not think it was necessarily _your_ god?" he asked.

The priestess shrugged. "I do not know who watches your path. As a cleric I am open to divine energy and sometimes that means energies other than _my_ goddess'." She patted his shoulder. "Get dressed. I will introduce you to Obedai and then show you the village."

* * *

 _Kela_ (Elven)- Leave.

 _Dalhar_ (Drowic)- Child

If my elvish is incorrect blame the fact that I have a shoddy tel'quessir translator tool. The song Ara sings I got from the Google and it was cited on a forum as a Harper ballad.


End file.
